Dear John,

Thanks for your info on M. occa and scolopax.

I'm not sure what you might want to know about the new Thailand book. These
are the important parts of the book as I see it: Introducing Molluscs and
Their Environments, Collecting Molluscs, Identifying Molluscs, Checklist of
Species Occurring in the Area, Species Accounts (descriptions and plates),
and the usual glossary, bibliography and indices. There are 44 color plates
and some line drawings. They treat all the mollusc species they found,
regardless of size or aesthetics.

One limitation is that the book focuses on the area around Pattani in the
Southeast. This seems to have a relatively meager fauna. The book explains
that there is little coral formation and hard substrates are scarce. In
eight years of collecting, they found 531 species. (In less than two weeks,
I found over 200 species in the Phuket Sea area in the Southwest). They
found just one Rissoid species. And they illustrate Strombus vittatus
apicatus with a juvenile specimen (due to scarcity?), a beauty which I would
personally nominate for Thai National Seashell because it resembles so
closely some of the spires on the King's Palace in Bangkok.

Nevertheless, the book is well worth the price and fills a huge hole in the
general shell books available for the Indo-Pacific region. Up to now,
there's been no comprehensive book to cover any area between the Arabian
Gulf and the Philippines or Australia (that I know of).

Anybody else have responses to the book?

David Kirsh
Durham, NC